Killer Instinct (1994 video game)
Killer Instinct is a fighting game developed by Rare and published by Midway and Nintendo. Initially released in arcades in 1994, and rumored to use an "Ultra 64" hardware engine, in reality the proprietary arcade hardware was co-developed by Rare and Midway. The game received a high profile launch on the Super Nintendo, as well as on the Game Boy. Its popularity led to a sequel, Killer Instinct 2. Story Ultratech is a very powerful megacorporation (entities which, in this future setting, have replaced all governments) which organizes a tournament called Killer Instinct. Along with regular participants, experimental creatures created by Ultratech also fight in the tournament so their strength can be tested. Ultratech also discovers a technology to make bridges between dimensions, and releases a two-headed monster called Eyedol from this dimensional prison. Characters Gameplay Killer Instinct plays like many other fighting games, in which the player controls a character in order to beat an opponent in a one-on-one encounter. The game borrows the attack set of Street Fighter and is also inspired by the finishing moves from Mortal Kombat. There are also several features that distinguish it from other franchises: * A double energy bar: instead of winning two rounds, each player has two bars of energy. If a character finishes with his or her opponent's first life bar, the fight stops and resumes like a round, but the winning character still keeps whatever amount of energy he or she had at that moment. The player who depletes his or her opponent's second life bar wins the bout. * Automatic combos: rather than press the necessary buttons in order to deliver the individual attacks that form a combo, in Killer Instinct the combos are automated and can be enabled by inputting a determined button or special move (which led to the character to deliver a string of hits). * Finishing moves: Bearing resemblance to Mortal Kombat's Fatalities, each character has at least two moves known as No Mercy (Danger Move in later revisions) in order to finish the opponent in a violent manner. One of these No Mercy moves can be executed at the end of a combo (which is labeled as an Ultimate combo), when the opponents life bar flashes red (when his or her second bar is going to be depleted), although it uses a different combination of movements. Another finisher is the Humiliation, that forces the opponent to dance (the dance style depends on the character), but this can only be used if the player has his or her first life bar. * Ultra Combo: Another finisher; it operates like an Ultimate combo, though this one allows the character to deliver a long string of hits as the combo finisher instead, usually surpassing 20 hits, and can sometimes reach upwards of 80+ hits. * Combo Breaker: The player who is being caught in a combo may break out of it by performing a combo breaker move. The combo breaker is a designated special move of the player's character. A combo can be broken at either the auto-double or linker stage. To successfully break an auto-double, the player must use the breaker move at a strength lower than the auto-double itself (i.e. for a player to break a Medium auto-double s/he must use a Quick breaker). The combo can also be broken at the linker stage. At this stage the player can use any strength of breaker, making long combos a risky affair. Also, after performing a combo breaker, a white starburst will appear at the tip of the breaker's health bar, enabling advanced versions of some special moves that require a different command (i.e. Jago, instead of a regular green fireball, can shoot a red fireball Arcade hardware * Killer Instinct was the first arcade game to use an internal hard disk drive in addition to the game's ROMs.needed This allowed it to store massive amounts of data thereby giving it the ability to have more detailed graphics than other games of this genre. * The game used pre-rendered sprites for characters, created with Silicon Graphics, Inc. computers and the backgrounds were pre-rendered as a "movie," which simply adjusted frames based on the current location of the players.1 All this data was stored on the hard drive. * Killer Instinct's R4600 processor was clocked at 100 MHz. Ports Super Nintendo A Super Nintendo port was released. While many arcade features were kept, sprites were altered, downsampled, or removed. The graphic detail was vastly reduced and the character sprites were smaller. The stages with a 3D panning camera were simplified into a 2D panning view using parallax scrolling for the background and mode 7 for the ground or arena, simulating thus, a pseudo-3D effect. Zooming and scaling were removed. Some of the stages were redesigned. The full motion videos that showed the characters after a victory were replaced by still images. Voice samples and sound effects were shortened. Most of the characters preserved their special moves and danger moves. However, some of the special graphical effects — notably the shadow move effect — were removed. In addition, the skulls that surround Spinal when he absorbs projectiles are shown under his energy bar instead. To make up for the loss of overall quality, some other modes were added, such as a training mode, a tournament mode (used for multi-player purposes), and other options. The Super Nintendo version was packaged with a sixteen track audio compact disc soundtrack album entitled Killer Cuts featuring arrangements of music from the game. Killer Cuts was later sold through Nintendo Power's Super Power Supplies mail order service in both CD and cassette form. The Super NES game was packaged in a black casing in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States, as instead of the standard grey shell. Game Boy A Game Boy port was also made, but sacrifices were necessary due to the system's limitations. As a result, neither Cinder or Riptor appear, and the moves were heavily altered, especially Sabrewulf's, due to the more limited controls of the portable. The game supports some coloring when played in a Super Game Boy. Super Game Boy also allowed for a two player versus match to be played by inserting a second controller. Reception It was rated the 148th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list. Screwattack listed it as the 5th best fighting game of all time, and as the 19th best Super Nintendo game of all time. Killer Instinct XBLA In an interview with website 1UP, Rare studio manager, Mark Betteridge, revealed that Rare would like to bring the classic Killer Instinct coin-op to Xbox LIVE Arcade. Sequels Killer Instinct 2 Killer Instinct (Xbox One) On June 10, 2013, at Microsoft's E3 press conference, a new sequel to Killer Instinct, was announced as an exclusive title on the new Xbox One. References 1.^ Retrieved 2008-06-03. "Catalogue of Arcade Emulation Software". 2.^ "NP Top 200", Nintendo Power 200: 58–66, February 2006 . 3.^ http://www.screwattack.com/Top10/FightingGames 4.^ http://www.screwattack.com/Top10/SNESGames20-11 5.^ Retrieved 2008-11-24. "A Rare Look at Rare". 6.^ http://www.destructoid.com/x10-killer-instinct-3-is-still-a-possibility-163876.phtml Gallery Killerinstinct1.jpg External links * Killer Instinct at the Open Directory Project * Killer Instinct at the Killer List of Videogames * Killer Instinct at Nintendo.com (archives of the original at the Internet Archive) * Killer Instinct at NinDB Category:Games Category:Killer Instinct